


cynosure

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Spoilers for base game AND dlc, it's requited but everyone involved is trying desperately not to make it weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2020-10-26 15:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20744633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: As in, a guiding star. As in, that which serves to direct. As in, the subject of attention and attraction.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> edit: since this fic is way longer now it deserves a proper description. this is a loosely connected series of oneshots focusing on the pre-romantic relationship between jesse, emily, and polaris. they differ in style/tone/length but tend to be a little more raw than my other control fics. hopefully in a good way! i don't update regularly but sometimes i just randomly get the urge to write about these three so you never know!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a little thing. i really liked their epilogue conversation.

**Initial Observations on Contact with Paranatural Entity EID-19929, Designated Polaris**

…contact was established at [REDACTED] and lasted approximately thirty seconds. Subject (me!) reports the experience feeling significantly longer—cross reference with other instances of time dilation?

Sensation was pleasant but not obtrusively so. Reminiscent of [REDACTED]. EID-19929 is able to communicate audiovisually as well as access memories in subjects. Subject (still me) reports no physical changes aside from slightly increased heart rate and shortness of breath.

As the cadence of Polaris’ speech bears a superficial similarity to the Hiss incantation, it’s worth further exploring the study of how resonant-based entities express that resonance to and through humans. This could potentially be huge in opening up communication between us and extradimensional forms of life.

Sidenote: in keeping with Dr. Darling’s theories on archetypes, I wonder if [REDACTED] naming the entity Polaris didn’t effect her development, or their relationship in some way? A guiding star is a pretty significant symbol…

Refer to file [REDACTED] for full report.

The previous Director would not have lifted coffee cups with his mind for Emily’s tests.

Jesse Faden really does not resemble the old Director in any way, save for an instinctive approach to their work and a confidence in the way she carries herself. When they talk, she says she’s unsure about her new position. But you’d never know it to look at her, walking into every situation with a swagger and her service weapon spinning.

It drives—used to drive—Dr. Darling crazy when Trench would just show up and demand they handle things one way or the other with no explanation. Standing in their shoes, she doesn’t really get it. If she’s all theory, then Jesse is all practice. So far, they complement each other nicely instead of butting heads.

It comes down to trust, she thinks. If Jesse wants to go off and ‘handle’ an angry refrigerator on her own, Emily trusts her to come back and trusts her to use whatever she found wisely. How can she not? Jesse told her everything, openly. Even though revealing her secret could have gotten her into serious trouble with practically anyone else, she trusted Emily to trust her. That has to count for something, right?

(The whole savior thing helps, too. The way she had mowed through Hiss corruption like a wildfire. The fact that she had kept them all safe despite what she must have thought of the Bureau.

When everything started, Emily thought she was going to die. Or at least end up a floating, murmuring husk.

And now she is tracking vitals and watching sweat on the Director’s brow. In a few hours they’re both going to learn some deeply unpleasant information, but for now Emily is feeling something that she could almost describe as _fun_.)

“I’m thinking next we can try mapping your brain activity while you talk to Polaris.” She says, scrawling notes while Jesse idly bounces the mug up and down in the space between them. “It might give us a better idea of what’s going on, physically—though I guess there’s no reason she would adhere to normal human physiology, can you ask her?” It’s probably the thousandth time she’s said that, but it’s just not every day she has an open line of communication with an extradimensional lifeform in front of her.

Jesse doesn’t laugh—she hasn’t heard Jesse laugh properly, she doesn’t seem the type—but she does smirk a little at the exuberance. “You’re probably not going to see anything. We’ve had plenty of checkups, none of them noticed her.” She catches the mug out of the air and takes a sip, effortless. So cool.

“So she must be pretty integrated into your body. Does she feel what you feel? How does she perceive our dimension?” It feels rude talking about Polaris like she’s not there, asking Jesse to play telephone. Which gives her the idea. “Can I…talk to her?”

She expects to be shot down immediately, but Jesse just raises an eyebrow. At her audacity, no doubt. “Give us a minute.” They confer. After a moment, Jesse nods. “Yeah, we can try.” She gestures for Emily to come closer. And she’s not particularly sentimental, but for a second it feels like her stomach is doing flips.

Jesse reaches out—not like she does when cleansing something from a distance, her arm extended with assertive intent. Instead her hand brushes the side of Emily’s face. Though she’s no less intent.

It’s not that her vision changes so much as it changes texture in her mind. She’s still looking at Jesse’s face, but the image slides around, her focus moves off it. Other sensory input is coming from somewhere, making vision only a fraction of what she can really see.

_A kaleidoscope. Emily as a small child, on the beach, struggling between delight and frustration when her parents cannot explain to her why seashells grow in fractal shapes. The long halls of the bureau. Sunlight on a pillow, on someone’s hair. Her hair, Jesse’s hair, it’s all the same. Stained glass. Stella illa quae polaris dicitur. Sea glass. Refracting light. I am as constant as the northern star. Is that her own voice? Around one constant they revolve._

_Laughter. Jesse’s voice, but not Jesse’s laugh. She has never heard the Director laugh, not fully. A slide projector running against a blank white wall; the slide it shows is Jesse’s face. Around one constant they revolve. A flicker, a spiral of refracting light again in her vision and then it withdraws_—Jesse’s hand withdraws from where she’s been unconsciously leaning into it.

“Wow.” Emily exhales. She’s not sure what she had expected. A voice, maybe, mysterious but still recognizable. She should know by now it’s never that simple. But this is better, way better, something truly alien for her to puzzle through. “She’s incredible.” A completely different tone from the Hiss incantation, but there are some similarities in the cadence. So her theories about resonant-based organisms might need some work. The idea makes her giddy.

Jesse has learned to hide when she’s listening to her companion, but now there’s no need to bother. She tilts her head a little, eyes briefly unfocused, then looks back to Emily. “I think she likes you too.” She says with that half-chuckle on the end.

And if that doesn’t make her heart skip a beat. It’s not like that—of course it’s not like _that_—but it’s been a long time since she met anyone outside of work—though Jesse is from work now, technically, and Polaris too, and she’s not really sure what the policy on relationships is when it comes to the Director--and it doesn’t matter because it’s not like that anyway.

So she ducks the comment. “You two are pretty close, huh?” Emily tries to say in a way that doesn’t indicate _I may be slightly hot under the collar for you and your alien friend_. Because it’s not about that. It’s about the science. Ulterior motives would be highly unprofessional.

The little head tilt gesture again, somewhere between listening and leaning on someone’s arm. “You could say that, yeah.” Her voice goes so much softer when she’s talking about Polaris, moreso even than when she mentions her brother. Her eyes flutter closed, as if to better pay attention. “She was gone for a long time. I…I missed her.” Then she straightens up. Whatever softness or sadness was in her voice is shaken off. “I guess that must sound a little weird to you guys, given everything going on.”

“She saved you, right?” Emily shrugs. The attitude that some of the Bureau has always had—that the paranatural is ultimately their enemy, to be destroyed or controlled—has always grated on her. It’s the fear of the narrowminded, not willing to embrace the unknown. “You trust her, and I trust you.”

Jesse stares at her for a moment, then shakes her head. “You know, that’s the thing about you. I tell you I have a magic voice in my head and you don’t question my sanity or worry about if it’s safe. You just say okay and start talking to her like she matters. You just trust me.”

And Jesse’s stare is just a little too intense, her eyes a little too blue, so she deflects again. “Of course we all trust you. You’re our Director.” _Our guiding star._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wait, here's more! spoilers for the end so watch out. i loved that ending sequence

**Additional Notes on Paranatural Entity EID-19929, Designated Polaris**

…repetition of the phrases seems key. Whatever resonance Polaris is based on produces a vibration which cancels that of the Hiss. What we don’t know yet if this is a common interaction between resonant-based lifeforms or particular to these two.

Depending on the degree of manipulation possible, the cancellation effect provided by Polaris could be a necessary line of defense for us. So far we’ve only seen that protection apply to one person, [REDACTED], but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that it could be amplified, extended to others.

Of course, we’d need to understand how to accomplish that mechanically. And I should probably ask the two of them if they agree…

Refer to file [REDACTED] for full report.

She doesn’t think about the experience again until much later, unsurprising given the thousand-thousand things she’s juggling on behalf of all of research. Pretty damn inconvenient for Darling to wander off somewhere (not to die, she’s sure somehow she would know if he was dead. As if the Board would send her a memo about changes in the department or something.)

So it’s not until later that Emily thinks about it. Later being when they hear the crash that they will learn is Hedron falling, and she only has the time and presence of mind to say _fuck_ and think _oh no Jesse_ before the lights on all their HRAs flicker and go dark. And then it has her.

She can hear it. A sound like a needle. _You are a worm through time. The thunder song distorts you._ Blood blooms behind her eyes.

Emily blinks it back and finds she’s back in Research, zoning out. Everyone’s here, going about their work like normal, Darling fiddling with a Newton’s cradle. There was something she was supposed to be doing, something she was supposed to look into, but she can’t quite remember what it is.

She’s too embarrassed to ask for a reminder, so she just goes through the motions of work. It’s fine, but it feels off somehow. Maybe she should go for a checkup or something—it’s not like her to space this much, or forget things. Her hearing is a little weird too, the radios sound muffled. Maybe it’s an ear infection.

At least no one notices there’s something up with her. No one really notices her at all, least of all Dr. Darling, who’s ignored all her questions all morning. He won’t even look at her to acknowledge her. She hasn’t even seen his face.

She never thought she’d say this, but the work is getting boring. Every report she read is devoid of detail. No argument, no questions. No passion in it. Maybe there’s something going around, maybe everyone’s feeling a little down. The radio is distractingly loud. They don’t usually have it going in Research. She feels like she has a fever.

A little flicker of light nudges the edge of her vision, a stray refraction from a prism. It draws her attention to her desk, a memo waiting. Labeled urgent: for the Director’s eyes only. She should deliver it to the Director, right? The idea makes her feel nervous—she’s not important enough, surely, and the Director is a very busy person. But she also feels an immediate certainty wash over her. This is urgent, and she must deliver it to the Director. She stands abruptly and no one reacts. She practically bolts out of the office and absolutely no one reacts.

The radio is even louder out in the halls, so loud she can make out what it’s saying. _Happiness comes. White pearls, but yellow and red in the eye._ What a weird thing to have playing. It’s very distracting, and she finds it’s hard to remember the way to the Director’s office.

Actually, she can’t even remember who the Director is. Their name, or anything about them. _Through a mirror, inverted is made right._

That flickering light again, drawing her attention to the portraits on the walls. Didn’t the former Director retire recently? Who was the successor? Their portraits are all blurry. _Leave your insides by the door. _The only one she can make out is a janitor’s assistant, a woman with absolutely gorgeous hair and a piercing gaze. _Push the fingers through the surface into the wet._ She shivers. The woman looks familiar. Looks worried. _You’ve always been the new you._

The light shimmers just around the corner and she follows it now, through the shifting architecture. _You want this to be true. We stand around while you dream._ It’s leading her somewhere, it knows something. Knows her, somehow. The portraits are becoming more numerous, all of them the same woman. The light dances across her face.

She’s getting tired. They’ve been walking for such a long time, the light must be tired too. _You can almost hear our words but you forget. This happens more and more now._ The words over the radio are strangely beautiful, and she likes the idea of saying them. But the Director’s office is right in front of them. She has to go. She has to do her job.

Pushing the door open feels like an impossible weight, so she throws her body into it shoulder-first. When it swings open she can see—_you gave us permission in your regulations_—Jesse sitting at the desk. Her brother has a gun to her head. Emily stumbles forward and falls into blackness.

There’s nothing around her, just the sounds of the Hiss chant in the periphery of her awareness. But she is _aware_ now, at least, and able to rationalize. She takes stock of what she knows, which is little. If the HRAs can’t protect them, she only knows one other thing that can, and that’s—“Polaris?” She calls out into the flickering dark.

It is very cold. Emily is working on a boat in the arctic, a research vessel. It’s a clear, cloudless night, the sky and sea blending together beautifully. It’s a harsh place, and dangerous, but she knew that coming here. She’s here because she wants to be. She was curious. She wanted to know.

It’s just her and the captain, a red-haired woman who doesn’t talk much but steers them confidently. Right now they are together, hand in hand up on the deck looking out into the night. She is being taught to steer the ship. “See,” says the captain, “just follow the north star. She takes care of us.”

Emily looks up. The star is dim but bigger than the sun, not a circle but a prism that reflects the light of others in rings around it. _Around one constant they revolve_. It speaks to her so gently.

Together they steer the ship towards it, into its light. At the center is someone who looks like Jesse but can’t be her. Her eyes are too different, her cadence strange. Her hair leaves an afterimage like the trail of a comet. Jesse runs forward and embraces her as she speaks. _I am as constant as the northern star, _she says. _Growing brighter. Around one constant they revolve._

And Emily falls out of midair and onto her ass in the middle of the executive suite.

Everyone else is doing pretty much the same, groaning and trying to orient themselves. She’s plenty oriented. The lights on the HRAs are back on. So Jesse and Polaris must be safe. The fact that that’s her first thought pulls it all into clarity: she’s got it bad, worse than a little workplace crush. Given what she just saw, well, who knows. Clearly they like her well enough.

“Stay calm.” She calls out to the rest of the team, struggling back to their feet. “Our Director has it under control.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops there's a little more. this has become the fun thing i write between work and i didn't necessarily expect anyone else to look at it, so thanks all for reading!

**From the Desk of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Control to the Bureau Head of Research:**

…so I really don’t know how well I can answer those questions. Sorry.

The one thing I can say for sure is that Polaris is her own person. She’s not just a part of me that took on its own voice or a power that awakened or whatever the “working theories” about Hedron were. She’s another being. We just happen to be…really closely attached.

Maybe it’ll be easier to explain in person. I’ve got room in my schedule tomorrow?

Jesse wakes up quick. Always has, and it set permanently when she started learning to run at the first sign of danger. Be ready to pack your things and go in five. So she wakes fast. One instant between unconsciousness and awareness.

Her face is pressed into a cushion. Sunlight, mediated through the windows of the oldest house, filters over her eyelids. She has to blink a little, takes the time to stretch out before rolling over. _Good morning,_ she thinks deliberately. _How’d you sleep?_

Polaris answers her with a glimmer. She doesn’t really sleep, they know that much, since she can serve as a lookout while Jesse does. But she does rest in some way, or at least get some of the benefits from Jesse’s body—it’s all sort of unclear. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is: they are awake, and safe, and together. These are the things she takes stock of every morning.

She sits up on the couch where she’s been sleeping. Given the lockdown, people have been resting basically wherever they feel like it, though she gathers that’s not too different from how it usually is around here. There are cots in the shelters, but frankly she’d rather leave what few beds they have to the others. She’s thought about sleeping in the Oceanview, but doesn’t like the idea of what the place might do around her, how she might wake up. So, like a housecat, she just curls up wherever the mood strikes her.

(She doesn’t think she’ll leave, after the lockdown ends. Outings, sure—for food and fun and joining her agents in the field, making sure they don’t handle shit the way they handled her. But she’ll never do what Trench did, driving back and forth between some depressing apartment every night. She has everything she needs here.)

This spot in Research is a regular one for her. Polaris likes the light, the geometry of it, and Jesse loves the trees. Reminds her of her early days on the run, realizing, with a guilty sort of pleasure, that she could go wherever she wanted. Redwoods in California. Great misty forests up in Maine.

“I need coffee.” She says out loud, at the same time that Polaris sends her something that could be vaguely translated as _you should eat something._

It’s hard to explain how she talks. They’ve tried, and the people here get it better than anyone else, but there’s still no way she can really put it into words. It’s more _impulse_ than anything else, an urge or sensation she feels separate from her own. When they first met Polaris has spoken to her more in images, bits and pieces of other people’s conversations. But now they know each other well enough that there is rarely a need for such simplification.

She steps off the ground and floats (they both love the levitating, never gets old) her way down to the central cafeteria. Over some mediocre pre-packaged muffins and yes, coffee, they work out a plan for the day. Polaris flashes lazy images to her as she looks over memos._ A bird in flight, diving. Emily in a lab, wants something from them? _There’s not a lot on their schedule. She’ll spend some time helping out with maintenance, then she and Emily can sit down and try to work on the big issue.

That being the remaining Hiss, of course. No other issues there. None whatsoever.

“I just don’t know if that’s something she wants. I mean, I don’t even know if it’s something I want.”

A strand of fern unfurls and brushes against Jesse’s face. “Yeah, Arish told me she likes women, but that doesn’t mean anything about us necessarily.” The fern doesn’t respond to that one. Jesse sighs and moves to the next plant.

The plants have been extremely good listeners, especially since Polaris has been distinctly silent on the issue, as she is now. “It’s not like I have a normal love life. I have no idea how to talk to her about it.” She tries to say very casually, like it’s really not that big of a deal. Because it isn’t, really. The idea hadn’t even occurred to her until she started trying to write down the dream the Hiss had shown her, looking for some kind of clue about them, and thought _why did it upset me so much that fake-Emily called my brother hot?_

Jesse had asked the plants that one, too, and found the answer came easier than expected.

“What do I say? I like…spending time with you? I like that you’re passionate about work? Ugh, it’s not coming out right.” She grumbles to a calla lily, which straightens up and blooms in response. At least the plants find her charming.

Polaris glimmers in the treetops above her. And she follows, follows like she always does, spiraling up into tight geometric motions that mimic the staircases of Research. Flying was a good idea. It always helps to do something physical when she’s stuck in her head. Especially when Polaris doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

The problem isn’t that Jesse is afraid of being rejected. She’s pretty sure their…friendship, or good work dynamic, or whatever you want to call it isn’t so flimsy that a little awkwardness will break it apart. And she certainly doesn’t _need_ a partner. Really, she’s good with the partnership she has. She floats on her back in the air, basking in their shared light.

Jesse has been accused of being a loner, but she has never really been alone.

She was only a year old when Dylan was born. Long before any slide projectors or weird shit they had already made a thousand promises that it would be the two of them against the world, always. The idea of loneliness barely even occurred to her. Even when they took him away she had known, somehow, despite the distance between them, that he was alive. The same way she knows now. So she was never really alone.

By then there was Polaris, too, and then she was never alone even in her own head. Even in the years when she had gone quiet, Jesse knew she was still there. It was only when people tried to convince her otherwise that she had doubted it. The only times she felt really fucking scared. That, and the brief moment when Hedron fell. Not fear of the Hiss, but the brief feeling of being actually, truly alone.

(She shudders in the air, shakes it off.)

No, she feels weirder about what happens if it’s mutual.

First, there’s the issue of dating her co-worker. The Bureau doesn’t exactly adhere to a traditional power structure, making Emily more or less her own boss when it comes to day-to-day work, but it’s still something they would have to talk about. She thinks of Trench and Darling, falling apart. She won’t ever let them become like that.

Then there’s Polaris. They’re a package deal. And she knows Emily is okay with her, fascinated with her scientifically, but that’s nowhere near the same thing as dating.

(Emily’s intentions are good, she knows. Her eager curiosity is part of what make her, well, attractive. But she won’t let Polaris be treated like a lab rat. That comes first.)

Mostly it’s the fact that she doesn’t really know what dating means. She’s had—things. With a few people. But nothing serious, nothing long-term. If she’s being honest, it was mostly while Polaris was quiet. So that she wouldn’t have to deal with the crushing feeling of waking up alone. It doesn’t exactly speak highly of her as a girlfriend. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body.

A sense of warmth and normalcy floods her body as Polaris chooses that moment to speak up again. “Come on,” she smiles, rolls her eyes. “You know I always get sappy when it comes to you.”

See, she already knows she’s not going to fall into Trench’s mistakes. Not going to lock herself up alone and get all paranoid. Not going to try to handle everything herself. Technically, she’s the first time the Director has been two people. The new Director, well, they have a very hands-on approach.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright i THINK i'm leaving it here....at least until we get more information about the dlc ;)

**On the Nature of the Relationships Between Humans and Paranatural Entities**

…so the pattern that we begin to see is that while Polaris inherently possesses this level of latent psychic energy, she can’t use it to its full potential without a human directing.

While we’ve obviously seen clearly hostile entities such as the Hiss and [REDACTED], it’s also possible that there are other forms of life out there open to symbiotic relationships. We think of all these entities as distinct, but what if in their native dimensions there are all kinds of entities with a variety of relationships to each other, just like our own dimension? And what if we consider all these dimensions as part of a whole, rather than separate?

Consider altered items, objects of power. Humans are very, very good at assigning importance to things, ascribing them with meaning. Might that be our role in the paranatural ecosystem?

Refer to file [REDACTED] for full report.

“I have kind of a wild idea.”

It’s the first thing Emily says to her, before she even sits down. They’re in the HRA lab, Emily messing with some weird buttons on a new model. And it almost makes her laugh, it’s so typical. What’s a normal work day without a wild idea? “Okay, hit me.” Jesse pushes up her sleeves a little. It’s all part of the job.

They set it up like a shooting range. Three Hiss-corrupted agents in front of her. Flimsy, easy targets, she can knock them aside as easily as lifting her arm at this point. But that’s not what they’re here for.

Emily’s behind her, watching intently, ready to take notes.

The service weapon in her hand before she thinks about it. One steady, piercing shot, enough force to disrupt the Hiss resonance and let her in.

The ability to seize minds is like her other powers in that it doesn’t feel like an active effort. She doesn’t _try_ to levitate, she simply steps into the air. With this, she doesn’t try so much as she just…reaches out and takes control.

The body lights up in a blue-green shimmer. She can’t feel the foreign body, but Polaris sure can, and moves it to her flank. Raises its gun and takes out the two other Hiss in front of her, turning them into a wash of technicolor before they fade away.

Then the body slumps and collapses like a puppet with its strings cut. It dissolves with the rest of them. She turn back to Emily, who is furiously scribbling something on a clipboard. “So, how’d I do?”

“Fantastic,” She doesn’t look up, but her excitement is audible. “I mean it, Jesse, this is—I have _so_ many ideas.”

Polaris flares an aurora at the borders of her vision, beaming with praise. _She thinks we’re fantastic._ She tries not to let it show on her face.

“It’s not you, is it?” Emily raises her head, meets their eyes. Standing straight, she’s a little taller than Jesse. “It’s her. Polaris, I mean. You’re directing her resonance.”

_Wow. She got that just from watching_. In her mind, memory of Emily’s performance review from years ago, found from sifting through an old cabinet. _Inherent awareness of the paranatural,_ it had said. _Ability to draw unseen connections._

While she’s in her head, Emily is gesturing emphatically with a pen. “Do you see what I’m saying? It’s the same mechanism that keeps the HRAs functioning. You’re amplifying her. My working theory is that while Hedron served as a sort of tuned mass damper, Polaris is—”

“Okay, explain for me?”

“The specifics probably won’t matter for you, since you can just do your…” She reaches her arm out, mimicking the motion Jesse does when seizing a body. “But what I’m saying is that I think we might be able to use this to cleanse the nonviolent Hiss.”

Her excitement falters for a moment when she sees how Jesse rubs at her right shoulder. It’s not an intentional motion. The service weapon doesn’t recoil, exactly—if it did her arm would probably hurt a lot worse. It just sort of makes her arms feel weird, all the way up to the shoulder. When she messes with it it’s more to bring the feeling back than anything.

Still, Emily reaches out and grazes it just barely before she seems to realize that she should ask before touching. “Sorry, I…” Her fingers curl, uncurl. “We could look into that? If the service weapon’s hurting you. I mean.”

Jesse tries not to notice her own heartbeat. Yes, Emily is a little taller than her. It’s easier to tell when they stand close. That’s neither here nor there.

“I’m fine.” She says, maybe a little too loud. “Let’s get to work.”

They set up shop in Central Executive, where things are a little more comfortable. The meeting rooms between the control point and the entrance of the oldest house is still thick with Hiss, dozens of people suspended in the air. They’ve mostly been corralled into makeshift containment cells. Glass-walled conference rooms with HRAs set up along the perimeter. Not a permanent solution, but it’s better than nothing.

They’re across from one of the containment rooms on one of the nicer couches, notes scattered across a massive coffee table. Perks of being your own boss. Jesse has her arms slung wide across the back of the couch, like she always does.

Emily is slouched forward, arranging her notes. “So the whole death thing is a problem. Does that happen every time?”

“The death is definitely a problem.” Something of an understatement. She reaches her hand out like she would in a fight. Watches her own fingers move. “It’s like…I can take control, but not give it.”

“But it’s not consistent. Why were you and I and the rest of the team able to come back from Hiss possession and remain physically, but not these people?” _Not your brother_, the unspoken implication.

“You said you felt like you were about to go under when the HRAs came back on. It was like that with me too.” She was lost from herself. It feels bad just talking about it, makes the hair on her neck stand up. “Maybe they already went under.”

“Duration of exposure!” Emily claps, beaming. “I’ve been thinking about the same thing when it comes to the physiological differences.”

The enthusiasm is nice, but… “That doesn’t exactly help us. We can’t just un-expose them. Unless you guys have something here that can reverse time.”

She doesn’t comment on that one. “No, I guess not.” Emily sighs, leans back on the couch. On Jesse’s arm, just slightly. “But are we sure they’re _gone_? Maybe there’s some part of them still in there. Maybe we could at least get them to a state like your brother.” She turns to look at both of them, her stare going right through Jesse. “She managed to find me. Maybe she can find them too.”

_Gentle windchimes in her mind._ The feeling of familiarity. “She says it was easier with you. She knows you.”

Emily’s eyes widen a little at that, then she ducks her head. _Okay, charmer. Take it easy. _“Can you try looking for them? Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll be helpful for me to observe.”

What’s she supposed to say? _I hate being a test subject, but I don’t mind when it’s you_. “Anything for your data.” _Ugh, that sounds even worse. _To her credit, Emily just laughs, picking up her notes. “You’re the best, you know that?”

She can’t respond to that. They’d better do this now before she loses her focus entirely. She looks at the conference room, the bodies floating as if suspended in water. _Ready?_ She thinks, with an answering echo. _Ready, ready, ready._

They reach out. They take control.

White stretches out in front of them. Behind them. This is new.

Jesse-Polaris tries to focus, blinks the whiteness away. It coalesces into walls and corridors. No ceiling. Mimicking the structure of the Oldest House, but with no detail. Sterile. Nothing but white.

They try walking at first, leaving shimmering light behind them like a breadcrumb trail. But the corridors wind with seemingly no pattern, leading to nothing. Every once in a while there’s a door set into the walls, also white. No knobs or handles to open it with. When they push, it rattles, but doesn’t move. They shove. They rip out a chunk of the floor, hurl it at the featureless door. It doesn’t move. The floor grows back.

Eventually they try floating above it all, trying to find some horizon to orient by. But there is none. Only a labyrinth that spills out beneath them, sprawling over the space, filling their vision. There’s no end to it in sight. Probably not one out of sight, either. It’s dizzying. They touch back down.

“Around one constant they revolve.” They say aloud, to steady each other. “We are the center. The compass spins and settles.” It’s not good, being here. They understand now why it’s so hard to bring people back.

Jesse-Polaris is a symbol of guidance. Of direction. Of orientation. Yet they are disoriented.

They’re not scared, nor even exactly worried. But unsettled. Their directive becomes _to return home_. They begin to trace their trail back through the sterile halls. Walking back feels much longer.

There’s nothing marking their entrance point save for a door. Not the one from the motel, like they’d expect. A nondescript door like all the others here, but with a handle. With a texture like wood.

They don’t pause to think about it. They step through.

Jesse finds herself in a yellow-hued lab room, one of Darling’s. Only now, half the room is taken up but massive whiteboards, floor to ceiling. At first she thinks it’s a flock of birds but it resolves into equations, clustered together. Polaris is separate from her now, manifests in a vaguely human-sized flickering light.

The equations on the boards have changed. So this is a dream. She tries to move one of them, but can’t. So not her dream.

Polaris is finding her way through the tangle of whiteboards, all intent. Jesse follows as it gets tighter. Dry-erase marker rubs off on her arm.

Emily is in the center of the tangle, writing on what looks like a standardized math test. Polaris alights behind her, casting off light, giving the effect of a shimmery halo. It’s enough to startle Emily into looking up. When she see them, her eyes go wide. “Figures. I think about you enough, figures you’d start showing up in my dreams.”

That catches her off guard. Startles her enough that she feels like she’s missed a step on the stairs, like she’s falling--

Jesse wakes up fast, like she always does. Her eyes snap open in the dimly lit conference room. How long were they in there? Clocks in the Oldest House can’t really be trusted, but the one on the wall claims it’s been several hours.

More importantly, Emily is asleep on the couch next to her. Her head must have fallen onto Jesse’s arm at some point, because now she’s comfortable curled up there. Leaning up against Jesse’s shoulder. So that’s something new.

Jesse closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then looks back down. She’s not…staring, or anything, just observing. Emily looks peaceful. She’s always going, jumping from one idea to the next. When was the last time she properly slept?

Slowly, so as not to wake her, Jesse curls her arm down around her. Her fingers rest on Emily’s skin. It feels nice. It feels right. Whatever nervousness she’s expecting to hit doesn’t come. Instead she just thinks _we thought of home and this is where we came to. _They haven’t had a home in a very long time, either of them. A stray thought from Polaris: _migratory birds, roosting_. They haven’t talked about it, but she’s pretty sure Emily is the same as her. No real home outside of this house. Outside of these people.

Emily shifts in her sleep, presses closer into Jesse’s side. She’s warm, and Jesse is warm everywhere they touch. It’s been a long time since she was this close to another person. But it feels so familiar, the weight of her, the bright presence. _An image of puzzle pieces, snapping into place_. They fit together nicely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all once again for reading! i would love to see more people writing for this game, so please hit me up if you need to bounce ideas off someone!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is going to be a long note and a short chapter, so i won't blame you for skipping it. i just wanted to say a quick thank you for all the love for this and my other control fics. this fandom is consistently incredibly thoughtful and well spoken, and i appreciate all your generous comments.  
i felt like i had kind of...said everything i needed to say on this game BUT foundation pretty much blew that idea out of the water. honestly it was so good i almost didn't want to write anything because they already gave me like, everything i wanted. there were still a couple things i wanted to explore, and it ended up being more than i could fit neatly into one cohesive piece. however, i already feel really bad for how long it's taken me to get through foundation, so, as compromise: here's a mini-chapter to buy me some time. more to come! and thank you all again.

**ADDENDUM TO RESOURCE REQUEST FORM XF-323-R**

…I’m talking basic stuff that we’re missing. I mean, Pope basically just told us to grab everything we could carry and follow her down here. It was super weird, even for her.

Sure, we’re getting plenty of measurements, but we barely have enough paper to write them down. I miss being able to sit at a desk. And the sand down here, it gets in everything. She might be willing to follow the Director anywhere, but the rest of us would prefer a little warning first.

The Astral Bleed is kind of pretty, in its threatening way, red sand bleeding into the stark white landscape like the first touches of watercolor on white canvas. Well, threatening for most people.

For Jesse, existing here is easy. She floats in the endless expanse as easily as if it were water. If the whole thing came crashing down around the roots, she figures, she’d be alright here. Put that on her new resume: a natural in navigating trans-dimensional environments.

She should have known, really, that something would come up. Things at the Bureau have become peaceful lately, by Bureau standards. Executive Sector remains a safe haven for all the living personnel. There’s no longer a daily matter of life or death. Sure, she still spends more time cleaning out Hiss and chasing down Altered Items than she does on anything that could really be called management, but Jesse’s pretty sure that will always be the case. The Director should lead by example, right?

Jesse kicks off a black platform into the empty space of the Astral Plane, dives for the next chunk of rock. Its surface seems to ripple like liquid, playing with the light. It’s beautiful here, and strange. If it weren’t for the ongoing catastrophe, it would be pleasant.

The thought comes to her, entirely unbidden: she wishes Emily were here to see this. Polaris glimmers brilliantly for a moment, a more enthusiastic agreement than usual. Jesse smiles a little. Polaris has always had her preferences, but she’s never really been fond of another person the way she is with Emily. It’s cute. It makes it harder for Jesse to tell herself that it’s for purely professional reasons that she wishes Emily were here. Only because this environment would suit her so well, her face lit up with discovery at the great anomalous caverns, the sheer undiscovered newness of this place. There’s no one else at the Bureau she’d rather rely on for stuff like this.

More than that she’s become a soothing presence in Jesse’s otherwise very un-soothing life. Grounding, balancing. At first she thought it was the same for both of them, their desire to know. But the more they steal quiet hours in the corners of cafeterias, the more she allows Emily to see her at work, the more Emily allows her a look at resultant readings, the more she’s realized how neatly they diverge.

Jesse just does things, has always done. Even before she met Polaris it was like that for her. In school she would either pick up a subject instinctively or not at all. In a way, coming to the Bureau has felt like a confirmation of truths they’ve known all along.

But it’s not enough for Emily to know something as fact, she also needs to ask why it came to be. Which has been vastly helpful, especially when Jesse helps pull her focus back from minutiae. For all that Jesse feels like a gun in the hands of the Board, Emily is just as potent a weapon when pointed in the right direction. In turn, it’s Emily who urges her to thoroughness when she wants to charge ahead, when she’s missing information she didn’t even know she needed.

That balance comes from all of her team, of course. But none of the others have daily coffee with her penciled into their schedule. None of them would presume to rest a hand on the small of her back, lay their head on her shoulder. With none of them would she reciprocate in kind.

They haven’t talked about it, still. She’s not really sure what the_ it_ is to talk about. She’s aware that there are rules to this sort of thing, but her life hasn’t given her much of a chance to learn them.

Still, she wishes Emily was there.

And then Emily is there.

“Jesse! Hey!” She calls out, waving, still so far away she looks like a little black-and-white chess piece among the red sand. She’s standing by the Nail, swallowed not only by its height but the whole vast expanse of the cavern spilling out beyond them. A faint blue light blossoms suddenly around her.

Jesse touches down in front of her, her landing sending the sand up in little clouds around them. Emily smiles, delighted—she never gets tired of this trick, so Jesse will probably keep doing it forever.

“What are you doing here, Emily?” She’s probably projecting her disorientation so loud they can hear it in the next dimension over.

Emily tilts her head, curious. She hugs the clipboard to her chest. “What do you mean? You called me down here, remember?”

Now this is weird. Properly weird, not her usual weird. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.” Jesse hasn’t even left the Foundation since first coming down here. She’s pretty sure she’d remember that. So either there’s some other force at work here or the Board has suddenly decided to grant her telepathy without mentioning it to her. Neither of those ideas are particularly appealing.

“No, that’s right.” Emily taps her pen to her bottom lip, like she always does when she’s running some quick mental math. “You didn’t. But then…I remember you needing me to come here. I mean, you even told me how to get in.” She laughs a little, apparently unbothered. “Let’s just chalk it up to synchronicity to we can get to work.”

_She really takes everything in stride._ Jesse thinks, fondly. Polaris flashes her approval—but there’s something else there, a slightly sheepish undercurrent, little triangles of light catching inside Jesse’s chest and she realizes that she’s been conspired against. _Oh, you didn’t!_

No response. _Traitor._

Emily seems oblivious to their inner dialogue, content to start debriefing. It’s nice, even though she’s distracted. There’s something pleasantly settling about returning to their usual routine. When they’re done she feels—better, somehow, more grounded even as the tunnels of this place seem to distort around her.

“That was sneaky of you.” She says out loud, as soon as she’s out of earshot. Polaris twirls around the border of her vision, playful, reminding: _it is my nature to guide._

“Yeah, but not—” Jesse stops herself. It’s not like there was any harm in it. And she’s glad, really, to have Emily here. Even more glad that Emily and Polaris seem to get along so well. But it’s another line crossed in the barrier of their professional relationship. It’s an intimate thing, maybe more intimate than Emily is aware of.

Her frustration isn’t with Polaris so much as with herself. It’s unlike her to hesitate so much. Unbecoming of the Director. But this isn’t exactly her field of expertise. There are, as Emily would say, too many variables for her to draw a conclusion.

The feeling of Polaris settles lightly on her forehead, her shoulders, her chest. This is so much easier. No words between them, nothing to screw up. She can feel the meaning pass from Polaris to her: an apology. But not regret.

Jesse sighs. She’s not going to win this argument. “Just ask me before you pull something like that again, okay?”

Polaris’ answering spiral seems distinctly smug.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it, perhaps, a date

**Regarding Formal Request to Bypass Fieldwork Training #3159-R**

…approved to conduct fieldwork in a strictly limited capacity. As the individual in question has certainly not received the necessary combat training, we can only clear her for field duty in the presence of someone with combat certification level [REDACTED]. Accompaniment by a senior ranger or [REDACTED] is MANDATORY at all times.

ADDENDUM:

Look, I’m pretty sure the new Director is going to take her out there anyway, so we might as well approve it and save ourselves the argument.

“As vacations go,” she says, “this one is pretty good.” Emily can feel her arms complaining a little as Jesse helps pull her up one of the shelves of strange blue crystal, but it’s a nice change of pace.

Not that she would know what to measure it against, anyway. She hasn’t taken time off since she came to the Bureau, fresh out of school. Back when she was new, the senior staff had encouraged her to make the most of her sick days—that was before they realized she was of a kind with Darling, who would rather be miserably ill in his lab than be forced to leave it. The Oldest House isn’t quite a home, but neither is the studio apartment that she mostly just associates with the feeling of thinking in circles, late at night, wishing she had the means to pursue whatever tangent of thought would keep her awake. The lockdown hadn’t been more than a slight inconvenience, really.

So, a vacation at work then. It was a joke, but it’s more true the more she thinks about it. Jesse huffs her little half-laugh, leading her deeper into the caverns, and it does feel like they might be somewhere else. Like this isn’t their work and they aren’t their jobs, they’re just two people who somehow stumbled into this massive cave system and are taking their time discovering it all.

“I can’t imagine what it was like to be the first people here.” A familiar hissing sound echoes from deeper in the cavern and Jesse gestures for her to come closer. Emily isn’t scared, though. Hasn’t been, really, since Jesse took the position. “It’s a little crowded now.”

Jesse cracks her knuckles, and the crystals lining the walls crack with her. “I’ll kick them out if they get close.” The fragments take form above and around them, shaking slightly from the force of her power. Coming down here was worth it just to see them work like this. Jesse and Polaris are a marvel in the field. So graceful and focused. The data just from watching them move around has been invaluable.

And, Emily’s reminded, watching the way Jesse’s hair flares around her face like a red halo, her interest isn’t purely scientific. _Maybe that’s what makes it a vacation. _After a thorough amount of study she’s concluded that the thing that makes her heart beat a little faster around them goes beyond admiration or even curiosity. Which is fine with her, really. It’s not an unpleasant feeling. If they haven’t figured it out by now, they probably never will, and it might be for the best. The last thing she wants is to make them uncomfortable. Besides, what could she possibly want from them, more than this, the chance to be by their side and measure every --

“Hold on.” Jesse stops them where the ground has been split by the Astral Plane, the cave floor dropping out into endless nothing. She frowns a little, her eyes looking slightly aside: conferring with Polaris. Emily waits for them, peeks over the edge of the chasm. Nothing but white all the way down.

“Okay.” She stands up straight, shoulders squared, palms up in front of her. “Come here.”

There’s an awkward beat as Emily’s body tries to catch up to her brain. She places her hands over Jesse’s, feels her press up just slightly. “Are you going to—” Levitate, she’s about to ask but suddenly Jesse is stepping off the ground and they’re moving, slowly but surely through the air.

It’s unreal. And somehow nothing like she expected. She feels—incorporeal, really, the only part of her that’s solid is the firm press of her hands against Jesse’s. The white light of the Astral Plane is so bright and all encompassing that they seem suspended in nothingness. She keeps instinctively trying to walk, and Jesse smiles a little every time she tries to take a step. It’s like moving her legs through water. “Having fun?”

“Absolutely!” The light splits and fractures, resolves itself into a blue shimmer. The now familiar feeling of Polaris moving through her the way she must always move in Jesse—is that what the tingling sensation in her limbs is? _Thank you_, she tries to think, in that moment of connection, and receives—

_A flock of birds against a steel grey sky. The hidden side of an eye, the optic nerve. A million grains of sand melting down into glass. Ascending a spiral staircase. The eye opens, seeing herself inside herself a thousand times refracted._

And then they touch down on the other side, the red sands whipping up around their feet. “Hope that wasn’t too bad.” Jesse says, utterly casual. As if that was nothing for her. Which, Emily supposes, it was. She does this a hundred times a day.

“Are you kidding?” She hasn’t dropped Emily’s hands, and now that all the strange sensations are gone, she’s suddenly hyperaware of how it feels. They’re warm. Practiced and solid. “That was amazing! You have to let me study this sometime—I think you might be resonating with the magnetic fields of the earth. It makes sense, since Polaris is tuned in to magnetic north—”

Jesse cuts her off gently, suddenly looking away. “Okay. Yeah. But let’s get you to that lab first.” She lets her hands fall, slowly, back to her sides.

It’s selfish, but she doesn’t want that. So Emily makes a decision. Her hands chase the warmth, their fingertips grazing. The kind of gesture that could be taken as convenience if it weren’t for the hundred gestures preceding it. Jesse freezes for a moment, wide-eyed in a way that’s rare for the Director at work, but she lets her hand be held. Then she blinks, her expression resolving into something focused and determined. “Right. Let’s go.”

They make the rest of the journey like that, hand in hand, a shimmer passing back and forth between them.

Ash’s lab is like a cathedral, still and silent, walls low, light filtering in.

“Here’s…all this.” Jesse breaks its pristine silence, striding into the room. “I cleared the Hiss out when I came down earlier, so it should be safe. But stay close, okay?”

“Of course.” Emily responds, but she’s barely paying attention. Her gaze is immediately drawn to the cases in the center of the room. Tiny chunks of the Astral Plane, little monoliths in their prisons. The shape isn’t quite right, but something about them brings to mind the Nail. Were they carved that way? Or simply found, tiny perfect figures, floating in the void? Either way, they might help her examinations. “Did you find anything important down here earlier? Anything we should start with?”

Jesse has taken up floating overhead, reclining as if the air is a pool. “Well, Ash was nothing like Darling, I can tell you that much.” Blue spills out around her like water. She barely seems to notice, leaning back on her elbows, braced on nothing. “It’s organized down here, Emily, seriously. Everything’s all filed in its proper place. Really creepy stuff.”

Emily faux-gasps. “Bureau personnel taking a filing system seriously? Are you sure we didn’t step through a Threshold?” Sure enough, the room is stacked with filing cabinets, bright green and crisply ordered. There’s a strange geometry to the place, to its emptiness. On instinct alone she can tell Ash was trying to create specific conditions for something—but what? And had it worked?

The organization turns out to be a boon. She starts at the top left and begins to work her way around the lab, skimming her way through the documents. Much of it can be set aside for later, when their problems are less pressing and she has the time to pursue a new line of inquiry for no reason but the fun of it. Luckily, the most thorough material all pertains to the Nail. Plenty is stuff she’s already tried and tossed aside, but there’s a good deal to work with, detailed measurements and theories that are just bizarre enough to ring true.

One thing they agree on is this: it is emitting some type of anti-organic field. _Resonating_, Emily thinks, and jots that down. It might just be a hunch, but it’s something.

She doesn’t really notice how much time passes, which is typical when she has a project. Jesse mostly leaves her to her own devices. Emily doesn’t blame her, it’s probably not very interesting watching her endlessly read notes and take notes on those notes. Occasionally, though, she’ll float a drawer down from the top of the cabinet for Emily to reach more easily, or bring her files of interest from the other rooms, or even just call out to her to see how she’s doing.

It’s weird, but not unwelcome. No one’s ever been so involved with her before.

Jesse takes some interest in her as a person, which is nice. She gets it, like Darling got it, that Emily _is_ her work, but cares about her beyond that. The idea that they find her as fascinating as she finds them—that’s the thing that sticks in her mind and won’t let go, more than the brush of a hand.

“Emily.”

Jesse touches down near the desk she’s made her nest of papers on, disturbing her thoughts. “Everything alright?”

“Just checking in.” She pulls up a chair, settles in it with her legs crossed. “Also, I may have broken a vending machine. If you want some decades-old soda.”

“Very tempting,” Emily laughs, “But I think I’ll pass.”

Jesse is smiling, a real smile, not just the wry little curl of her lips. This is something that has been happening more and more lately. Emily would know, she’s the only one counting. But there’s still always a certain look to her face—like she’s not used to doing so. “Did you find what you were looking for?’

“Some of it. More questions than answers, but they’re the helpful kind.” Now that she’s pulled her attention away from the words, her body feels stiff. How long have they been down here? It’s even harder to tell time in the Foundation than the House proper. “Do you need to go?”

“That’s how you like it, right?” Jesse flashes her smile again. “Yeah, we should head back. But there’s one more thing I wanted to show you first.”

So Emily stands with her in front of the blast door as it inches open to reveal another red sand cavern. Another covered desk littered with papers. Another severe black tower in the center of the room.

And a hundred eyes etched into the stone around them.

“So, do you think…”

“Ash drew them?” Emily looks up at the cave walls from her place in the sand. It’s stained her shirt rusty at the edges. The substance of the mock Nail is cool and solid against her back. This one, at least, doesn’t seem to mind human observation. “Could be. But the other etchings down here are markedly older. If he did, he was mimicking someone else.”

The eyes covering the walls stare on, impassive to their presence. Jesse stares back. As if daring them to blink first. “I’ve found some of his tapes laying around. He was really, really attached to this place. The House itself, I mean, not the Board.”

“Now that’s interesting.” It’s a distinction they rarely make these days.

Jesse’s brows furrow, frowning at the eyes around them. They are not moved by the Director’s wrath. “He talks about the Board like they’re some kind of parasite. And I can’t tell if he’s right or something about this place was getting to him.”

Emily shrugs. “You probably know better than me. We tend to think of the Board, the House, and the Bureau as connected, but there’s nothing to prove that’s always been the case.” It used to frustrate her, back when she first started. So many assumptions made so that work could be done, but what kind of work were they doing with a foundation like that?

But now, she supposes, there’s no one to tell her off for asking the wrong kind of questions. Maybe what the Bureau needs is to pull their assumptions apart from the start.

“I don’t know, Emily. We’ve always been…” Jesse trails off, her eyes unfocusing for a lingering moment before coming back to herself. “We follow our intuition. We don’t plan, we don’t sneak around behind people’s backs, we just know what we need to do and we do it.” She leans her head back against the pillar, sighing, but the tension is clear in her hands. They push and pull at something out of reach, a faint light always moving between her fingertips. “I hate this shit. I don’t care about astral politics, I want to make sure people are safe.”

Warmth blooms in her chest. A lot has changed in the past few months, but Emily still remembers the moment the new Director charged into her shelter, ready to protect people who she owed less than nothing. It feels a little like she’s been trying to do right by Jesse since then.

And she’s still trying, leaning in and letting their shoulders nudge together in a way she hopes is reassuring. “We more or less trust the Board because we don’t really have another option, but I’d say most people here would consider themselves loyal to the Director.” She’s speaking for herself of course, but she’s willing to bet most people here would agree. Jesse’s straightforward manner has had a way of endearing her to her staff. The fact that she’s personally saved the lives of pretty much everyone in the building helps, too. “If you do…if something ever happens. We’ll be behind you.”

It doesn’t have the comforting effect she had hoped. “I really hope it doesn’t come to that. And if it does, how do I know we’re not just picking the lesser evil over and over again?” Her disgust with the idea is clear in her voice.

“I don’t think it’s really fair to think of it like that.” It comes out before she really considers the implications of what she’s saying to Jesse, of all people. “Obviously there are entities like the Hiss that are more actively malevolent towards us and our dimension, but I don’t think even they are evil, really, in a human sense. It implies a moral scale that doesn’t exist. I think we’re just part of an ecosystem that we don’t understand yet. But we will! At least, I hope we will.” She’s aware she’s rambling a little, gesturing aimlessly.

It’s moments like this that make her wish she were better at reading the mood, as Jesse looks at her with an expression she can’t quite unravel. Blue flashes in her irises. “Emily,” she says, warmly, “you’re really weird, you know that?”

Emily smiles. It shouldn’t make her feel so proud, to earn that tone. “It’s a job requirement.”

“Must have been.” Jesse leans back, letting her gaze travel back to the room. With her face angled up, the light from above graces her cheekbones, the strong line of her jaw.

The little cave is still, aside from the small motions of their breathing. It’s as cut off from the rest of the Bureau as the Bureau is from the outside world. And yet, Emily’s never felt trapped. Only the fierce and total sense that she is exactly where she is supposed to be.

“Jesse…” she starts, then trails off. It’s hard to find the words for what she wants to say. If Jesse doesn’t understand, well, she can live with that, but she suddenly wants very badly to be understood.

“You okay?”

If anyone will get it, it’s her.

“Don’t let that happen to me, alright?” Emily says, fervent. “It was the same thing with Darling. And he’s—I know he’s happy to be—consumed by what he loves, sure, and I understand completely. I feel it too. I want to learn everything. But I want to do it as myself. I want to be lucid, I don’t want to miss a second of it. I want to see everything clearly.” And she’s not attuned to these things the way Jesse is, but for a moment she feels something. Nothing physical, not even a voice in her head, just the sense that for an instant the atmosphere has changed. It makes her glance around the room again, to make sure the eyes haven’t blinked.

Jesse doesn’t hesitate. “You will. I promise.” Her tone is ferocious, not placating. The utter certainty she speaks with is infectious. Her authority comes from that raw confidence and determination, something not granted by any paranatural entity.

_Words drift to mind. A half forgotten poem. It is ever on its course and never falters._

“Whatever it is this place does to people, I don’t think it’s worked on us.” Jesse continues, apparently oblivious to the kind of feelings she inspires. “I know, I know, that’s what I would say if I was all house-crazy, but I mean it. We both came in here ready for this world. I don’t know if we chose it, but we wanted it.”

“Welcomed it.” Spent their lives searching for it.

“Yeah. And we have something the old guard didn’t.”

Does she mean Polaris? Emily tilts her head, curious. It’s true, having her on their side gives them a unique advantage--

“We trust each other.” Jesse finishes, simply, as if it’s really that obvious. “You’re watching my back, I’m watching yours. We agreed.”

Emily would be willing to set aside the secrets of the known universe in favor of a look inside the inner workings of Jesse’s mind. Or, failing that, to lean over and tuck that strand of hair behind her ear and kiss her with the false, alien sunlight trickling down over them. She wonders, like she has often wondered, how it would feel. Like discovery, maybe. Something entirely new.

“Thank you.” She says instead, and can only hope it conveys all she means. “Really, thank you. For bringing me down here.”

“Anything for my Head of Research.” That smile flickers across her face again, and something in the light flickers with it. Like she’s being lit from within. “We should probably get back soon, huh.”

She’s probably right. There’s no telling how long they’ve been there. “Astral bleed won’t stop itself.” Emily agrees, surprised to find herself feeling disappointed. She’s ready to get back to work, can feel that buzzing potential energy, but this digression has been more than welcome. She’s starting to see the appeal of taking a break every once in a while.

Jesse makes a soft sound between a laugh and a sigh. “No, I guess it won’t.” But she makes no move to leave yet. Just stretches out her legs, digging her heels into the sand.

They’re on vacation, after all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i confess, i'm not entirely satisfied with this--emotional scenes aren't really my thing. BUT i felt like that tense moment between them at the end of foundation deserved a little more time and exploration than the game could provide. i mean, jesse sounds like she's on the verge of tears for a significant amount of the whole final section...i just want her to get a break.

**EXAMINATION OF PARANATURAL TOPICS**

**ON THE DIRECTOR AS ARCHETYPE**

…so much of the established language of the Bureau is based on proper nouns. The House, [REDACTED], The Director. We might say that these are the simplest terms, used for brevity and to prevent confusion. But let’s take into account the theories put forth in files 5-29-9485 and 5-41-7532 regarding Objects of Power and their connection to the archetypes of our collective unconscious. What if we apply this idea to, say, the Director? It’s an evocative title, certainly. What does a Director mean to us rather than [REDACTED]?

And, in keeping with the theory as applied to Objects of Power, we might ask whether the Director is chosen for their role because of these qualities or whether they grow, by some property of [REDACTED], to embody the collective unconscious of the Bureau…

Refer to file [REDACTED] for full report.

Of course, their idyll doesn’t last. The Nail comes together and the Foundation begins to shake apart.

Jesse sprints through the caves as they shudder around her, panicked. _This wasn’t supposed to happen. They told us to fix the Nail. What are we not understanding? What were we missing? _She’s half thinking to herself, half calling out to Polaris, begging for an answer.

Polaris is tight, small in a way she almost never is. A new feeling from her, one that scares Jesse more than the collapsing Foundation ever could. Confusion. A sense of _I-do-not-know._ She’s never felt that before. It’s bleeding between them, hard to separate from her own fear. She’s scared, and that’s new too.

_That makes two of us._ Polaris doesn’t respond. It feels—not like when she had disappeared. No, she’s all too present, an agitation that settles deep in Jesse’s bones and makes her shake. How can she not know? It is in her nature to know.

“Hey. Hey.” Jesse stops her sprint just for a moment, to wrap her arms around herself, ignoring the dust that shakes down around them. “We can figure it out later. Right now we need to move.”

But how can they move? She always just acts, follows her intuition. But so much of that has been based in Polaris’ silent knowing guidance. How can they act when they don’t trust themselves?

_It doesn’t matter_, she thinks. _I’ll figure something out._

Emily will help, she hopes. She’ll know something. All they need is some kind of information, some kind of plan. And to get there in time.

Emily doesn’t help. She’s in an equal state of emergency, eyes wide, materials scattered around her like some kind of arcane circle—it would be funny if the situation weren’t so urgent.

Still, she handles it like she handles all forms of crisis, panic caged in by questions and the hope of answers and something else that Jesse doesn’t understand yet and doesn’t have the presence of mind to. She pulls her clipboard too tight to her chest, and her nails trace the paper’s edge over and over, but she’s steady. More steady than Jesse feels as she tries to focus.

“--Either way, right now both dimensions are vibrating at completely incompatible frequencies.” Emily taps her pen against her bottom lip, clearly still trying to reason through their situation, to break it down into something comprehensible. “The spatial friction they’re generating is incalculable.” It doesn’t feel comprehensible, it feels vast. Like the endless places of the Foundation where the floor drops out forever and Jesse is floating, falling, floating…

“I messed this all up.” Her frustration is spilling out, slipping a tense growl into her words. Her chest feels tight. “Maybe Marshall was right to destroy the Nail. I should have left it in pieces.” The pillar occupies the corner of her vision, looming sickly over them. The empty space of a pyramid at the top feels more like a presence than an absence. Something watching.

Emily shakes her head. “Then the Astral Plane would still be leaking in.” Her voice is tense, but patient. Not condescending or trying to be soothing, just measured. Pragmatic as ever. “Sometimes there’s no right answer, Jesse. We need more information—"

That hits her hard, makes Jesse clamp her jaw down harder. How can there be no right answer? It’s her job to find the right answer, no, to be the right answer. Everyone and everything here is her responsibility. How is she supposed to accept that there is no right answer? If there’s no right answer, then how is she any different now from the 11-year-old child just doing what she thought was right, what she thought would be fine, not knowing, not knowing--

The piercing light of focus runs up her spine, but it lacks clarity. It’s not the calm, resonant sound she’s used to.

“No. I need to fix this. Now.” It comes out harsh, her voice tight. Not like she should be acting. She needs to be in control. She can feel her jaw working in frustration as she tries to hold it all in. “I’ll just…I’ll figure something out.”

Clearly, she does not sound in control. Emily frowns a little, sensing her agitation, her brow creased with concern. “We should really make a plan. The tremors are originating from directly below us, but we don’t know—"

“Perfect.” Jesse’s body tenses into position automatically, the service weapon already spinning, all of her itching to move. She’ll take any direction at this point, she just needs to do something, anything. “I’ll head down there and take care of whatever’s going on. Just do what you can from here.” There’s no time left to waste.

Emily’s frown deepens. “Jesse, you can’t just—"

“I have to, Emily!” she snaps. And immediately regrets it. The jarring misfire of a gun, her face the muzzle.

The effect is instant, Emily closing her mouth into a set, unsmiling line. Her posture is stiff. She doesn’t say anything.

“I’m the Director,” Jesse spirals on, because she has to say something, can’t possibly sit in the unpleasant silence she created. “This is on me.” The weight of it feels physical, a crushing pressure.

Emily stares at her for a long moment. The urge to move, to do anything pulses through Jesse again. Her face feels hot and mortified at the loss of control. She should leave. In the corner of her vision, the passage beneath the Nail seems almost to be opening further, trying to swallow them whole. She should just leave, because there’s no time—

“If you’re not going to listen to me, then you better go figure out how to stop this.” Emily says, and her voice is not angry. It’s just quiet, restrained in a way that Emily never is.

It breaks her fucking heart. Jesse just nods, her control of herself too tenuous to do otherwise. Polaris is flooding her senses, grasping out for _something_ but she can’t begin to understand what.

They waver there for a moment, on the edge. And then the Foundation shakes again, the low rumble of stones scraping against each other suddenly echoing through the crossroads.

For an instant it’s like it’s all blending together, the pain and panic shared between the House itself and Polaris and her. There’s no time to linger, even if she could find the right words to say. Not trusting herself to speak, Jesse turns on her heel and all but throws herself into the pit with such haste that she barely hears the whispered _good luck_ behind her.

She stumbles through the tunnel beneath the Nail almost blindly, so frantic she can hardly move right. The crystals around her fracture and crush themselves to pieces without her even thinking about it.

Blue-green floods her vision. A wall.

Jesse tries to shake it off, to ignore the pricking feeling at the corners of her eyes. There’s no time for them to go back. She hates this feeling. She hasn’t cried over anyone or anything but Dylan since she was a kid and she’s not about to start.

Polaris flares in and around her again, wordless. Not a request, a painful necessity to slow down.

She relents, braces herself with one arm against the cave wall. They need to get it together, both of them, but she can’t. She’s just can’t. it’s not about Emily, not really. But if she can’t do her job—if she can’t protect everyone, if she cannot guide—if something happens to Emily, too--

“Come on,” she growls, more at herself than Polaris. “We need to keep going. There’s no time.”

She’s breathing shallow, in-out, in-out. Suddenly she’s really glad Emily isn’t here to see her having a fucking tantrum. Like she’s a lonely kid again, her first year on the run and so full of fear and anger she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Like then, she is not alone. It comes to her. The stillness of water. The fractal infinity of ice, spreading through it.

“Around one constant they revolve.” They say, together. The rest of Polaris’ words begin to unravel out of her. They share the same fear, in vivid quality. How can they be constant if they have failed? A foundation must bear the weight of the thing above it. But at least they are together.

And they haven’t failed yet, really.

_Accept no falsehoods, no false head, no false words._ Polaris reasons, with a confidence she doesn’t really feel. _No new you but one in you._ It rings hollow in the face of her crumbling expectations, but she’s right. She needs to focus on what’s in front of her. The rest can come later.

(But how long have they been saying that? She remembers waking up on her 12th birthday, thinking: we need to move now. We will figure it out later, we need to move now. There’s always something else. A new target, a new reason to move. When is later ever going to come? No time to think about it now.)

“Okay,” Jesse says to herself. “Okay.” She refuses to cry, still, and the tension of it is tight through her body. If there are hiss down here, she is really going to fuck them up.

Their descent through the tunnels is shaky, unsteady, but united. Polaris gives her the clarity she can’t seem to reach, and when Polaris falters in uncertainty she has the will to pull them forward. It’s slow progress as the sand seems to drag her down, the walls seem to block her path.

On the recordings down there, Ash mutters to her of the veins of the House, of its bones. Its guts that she walks in. The crystals snap out, defensive, an immune response. She tries to listen to the House, the way he speaks of it. And there’s—something, maybe, but it’s far out of her reach. Drowned out by the static speech of the Board and louder than that, an insidious hissing sound that never, never stops.

It chills her. Not the House, but the implications if he’s right about everything.

It must have been long, lonely years for him after this. Alone among enemies, and trusting no one. Working to undermine the Board from the inside. If he had done a better job, she thinks a little bitterly, maybe she wouldn’t be here in the first place. But that’s not true either. The Board didn’t order them to do what they did in Ordinary. No, they only provided the structure and the power necessary for it to be done.

At least it helps her piece together some of the accounts of Northmoor’s leadership. The fixation on power makes a little more sense in context. She can sort of see the shadow of what Trench was reacting to, the thing he must have sworn to himself that he would never be. The same way she has.

Ash and Northmoor. Trench and Darling. Her and Emily. A shiver runs through her involuntarily. Maybe she shouldn’t have promoted Emily. There’s some kind of gravity to their positions that she didn’t understand, still doesn’t. She should have thought of that to begin with. Nothing here is only its title, the weight of archetype echoing through everything.

Polaris nudges the edges of her awareness, soothing. Saying what they both know: Emily is the right person for the job, regardless. Maybe even more than they understood before. If she’s going to be tied to someone, there is no one it could be but Emily.

With that certainty in her heart, Jesse drops deeper, into the dark passage beneath the Nail.

It won’t make what comes next any easier.

She can’t bear to stay down there, after.

The Board doesn’t help. Improve her fucking attitude, ha. Their input has given new clarity to her worries. They don’t need to know she’s onto them yet, but it’s going to become a real problem sooner rather than later. And her intuition has already failed her once when it comes to them. Which means she needs a plan.

Emily is waiting at the crossroads when she emerges. Staring, unsubtle, into the chasm. Worried. Waiting for her. Jesse feels horrible all over again, compounded under the weight of what she’s just done. She tries to shove it down, but it lodges in her throat.

Jesse’s aware she must look a mess, covered in sweat and red dust from the fight. She can hardly tell what face she’s making, but she has the feeling it’s not particularly under control. “It’s handled,” she manages, staring down into the iron sand. If she sees Emily’s face knit up in concern she won’t be able to take it. “Can we talk somewhere private?”

“Of course.” Emily sounds calm, professional, but she can’t hide it either. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping her clipboard of notes. She seems reluctant to set it down, as if it could serve as some kind of shield against—well, she’s not sure what.

They walk in a total, uncomfortable silence, into a little corner of the tunnel towards the warehouse. Just far enough that their voices won’t carry. Then, and only then does Jesse look up.

She’s never seen an expression like that on Emily before. A frown creases her brow, her eyes wide and searching not in curiosity but a worry that verges on fear.

However much of a mess Jesse might look, it’s bad enough for Emily to abandon any pretense of professionalism and ask her, “Are you okay? What happened?”

Jesse bites at the inside of her cheek. She can do this. She can. She is the Director. All she has to do is state the facts as they are. “The Nail is secure. The Hiss can’t touch it.” There. That’s all that matters. Polaris flashes like a warning signal inside her and she pushes the feeling down.

“You did it, Jesse.” For a moment, her relief takes precedence over everything else between them. But only for a moment. She considers Jesse for a careful moment before asking, her tone again professional, “Did you ever find Marshall?”

“I did. She’s gone.” She can’t get Marshall’s voice out of her head, distorted by the words of the Hiss. _Soon you will no longer recognize us or yourself or him or her or them-- Just keep it together, Jesse_. She can feel the loose stones trembling around her. “She died thinking she’d saved the Bureau. Not a bad way to go.”

What a useless thing to say. It is a bad way to go and they both know it. She can’t bear to explain how pointless of a loss it was.

It settles over them like a pall. Jesse realizes, suddenly, that she’s going to have to break this news to everyone. That this is also part of her job. And neither she nor Emily were particularly close to Marshall, but some of the people here consider themselves _her Rangers_ and that will be so much worse. And even for her, it hurts, the kind of hurt that throws everything into perspective. She won’t lose anyone else. She cannot afford to.

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Listen, Jesse, I—”

Their contrition overlaps, voices blending together in the echoes of the cavern. They pause in tandem, too, staring at each other.

“I’m sorry.” It spills out of her, too fast, on the edge of something too much. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that, I was just—scared.”

Emily softens, whatever she was going to say getting pushed aside in a new flood of worry. She takes a deep breath, pulls herself back on track. “I understand that. And I’m sorry if I overstepped. But you can’t…” She trails off, ducking her head and looking away for a moment. Trying to decide how to proceed. “You can’t give me these speeches about how we need to trust each other and then just—not listen to me.”

Jesse is going to concede that she’s right, that after everything Emily doesn’t deserve to be pushed out again. But Emily just keeps going, fervent like when she’s working through a theory. “No, it’s not even that. You can yell or ignore me or keep secrets if you want, Jesse, but you can’t take everything on yourself. It doesn’t have to be me, but it can’t be only you. And yes, that means both of you.”

“It is only me.” Her voice comes out as a whisper, sounds like it belongs to someone else. She blinks back tears. “I’m the Director.”

“You’re _our_ Director.” Emily nearly pleads, and in a motion that she seems just as surprised by, reaches out to take her by the shoulders. “Let us take care of you too.”

The shock of contact is too much. She freezes, feels like she’s going to collapse, and then she’s being pulled close and her panicked body gives in. She lets herself fall forward and press her face into Emily’s shoulder, creasing the crisp white fabric of her shirt. Emily’s arms drape over her shoulders, resting at the middle of her back, the kind of touch that is definitely not professional but is careful not to cross any boundaries of friendship. It’s for the best, because Jesse can barely handle this, doesn’t know if she could take anything else. She’s not crying, but she feels like she might if she has to pull away.

Emily’s hand moves back and forth in soothing circles, bringing her closer with each motion. “It’s not that I don’t have faith in you, Jesse.” She says, softly. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, but what happens if the problem is something that can’t be fought?”

She’s warm and solid all around, a stable, comforting weight. It’s nice in a way she doesn’t even have the words for. Of all the myriad things she’s been missing, human contact barely even makes it onto the list. And she gets by with little touches, Emily always brushing her arm, her shoulder, a hundred little markers of friendship that keep her from starving. But this, being held for the first time she can remember since childhood, this is different. Different from the blue light that sometimes blankets her from the inside. A new kind of warmth. Is this that ever-moving _later_ when she finally gets to stop running?

It scares her, she realizes, it really does. Because she knows better than to trust anything that makes her feel safe and still. She’s survived so far by always being in motion, being in control.

“This whole time I’ve just—been doing what felt right.” She chokes out, muffled against Emily’s shoulder. Once she starts she can’t seem to stop, words spilling out of her with a strange kind of relief. “And it was the wrong thing to do. If I had been better, if I knew what I was doing, maybe I could have saved her. And it was one person this time but what if—what if next time it’s more, what if something happens to you—"

She feels more than hears Emily sigh, “Oh, Jesse…” She curls a little closer, pressing her face into Jesse’s hair.

It seems to hit them both at once, that this is too close to pass off as professional or even friendly, really. They disentangle a little, Jesse shifting back to give some space now that she’s gathered herself to some degree. It’s a little less vulnerable like this, though neither of them can quite look the other in the eye.

Emily pulls her hands away somewhat reluctantly. She misses the weight of them immediately. “I chose to be here, okay? I knew the risks, and I want to be here. And that’s my decision, no matter how you feel about it. I mean I—of course your opinion matters to me, just—"

“No, I get it.” Her voice comes out still a little shaky and she swallows hard, trying to get it under control. “You’re an adult. It’s your choice to make.” She knows that Emily couldn’t bear anyone trying to take this from her, no more than Jesse could. Especially now, when they can both feel it, like they’re getting closer to some kind of truth every day. It’s just that knowing the truth has always had a cost for her. Today has been an unpleasant reminder of that fact.

“It’s…a different kind of danger, this time.” Jesse sighs. She does feel better, in a way, less frantic and panicked. But now that all that adrenaline is gone, she’s exhausted. “Marshall, she—” It’s hard to put it into words, everything that she heard over the Hotline. What it gives her is always hard to relate, the words ceasing to be words as soon as she tries to make them something concrete. “The Board sabotaged her. They wanted her gone, and, well.”

Emily’s eyes widen again, the blue in them shining. There’s something there she half-remembers: a polar sea, calm but sharp beneath the surface_._

“That does…put things in perspective.” She nods, thoughtful. Not afraid, just considering.

Jesse rubs at her eyes, driving the last of the sharp sensation away. It doesn’t make her feel any less tired. “I don’t know what to do, Emily. I just know I can’t let this happen again.”

It will never stop surprising her, the way Emily takes everything in stride. “We’ll figure it out. Starting now.” She gives a shy, slight smile, like she’s not sure if it’s appropriate to smile yet but she just can’t help herself, already anticipating this new exploration of the unknown. “You keep doing your job, which you are phenomenal at, and act like you’re not onto them. And I’ll see what I can declassify.”

Her tone leaves no room for Jesse to argue. “You say that like it’s that easy.”

“It is that easy.” She says, simply, pure conviction. “All great science starts with questions, Jesse. And we have plenty.”

And the idea makes her shy little look turn into a proper smile, something that lights her face, her eyes from within. And Jesse is struck again by the out-of-place thought that her Head of Research—no, her friend—is really very pretty. And while the moment, the intensity fades, the thought doesn’t.

If Emily can tell anything is out of place, she doesn’t show it, too caught up in the idea of a new project. She taps her fingers back and forth on Jesse’s shoulder while she talks, animated, and it feels comfortable. Normal. “Here, we can go back up to Executive and sit down and start working on—” She snaps back to earth for a moment and looks Jesse up and down, taking in her exhausted state. "Or I can start working on it and you can nap on the couch while I talk at you.” _Like usual _goes unsaid, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Jesse rubs her eyes again. There’s the temptation to insist on getting back to work, to avoid the risk of having to think about any of it. But she feels Polaris pull at the thought, like the sensation of wind tugging at her hair.

“That sounds great, Emily.” She admits, lets the desire to _run_ fade from her tired limbs. Lets Polaris take the reins a little, to slow her heart, her breathing. Trust and gratitude flood her, soothing, lapping like waves from the inside. “Really. Thank you.”

She lets her fingers brush Emily’s, a little reciprocal gesture that she hopes conveys her thanks. This time, she’s not surprised when Emily takes her hand firmly in return. They’ll go together. Whatever happens next, she has to remember that.

As they’re leaving the Foundation there’s a sudden lightness in her body, a tangible weight off her shoulders. At first she thinks she’s imagining it, but it intensifies the further she gets from the Nail. Well, there definitely had been something strange about that place. Jesse can’t say she’s sorry to see it go. She’ll have to come back now and then, of course, but it’s probably for the best not to be down there for uninterrupted days on end. She thinks again of the House, of being down in its guts. Whatever it is, the shifting thing that serves as their home, it definitely has its own aims. It might not be malicious, but…when she thinks of the shifts, of all those people who got stuck down there…

She’s stopped in her tracks by that tugging sensation from Polaris again, a blue pulse at the back of her next that tells her to _be careful_. The eyes on the walls feel like they’re following her progress through the caverns. The House itself, always watching. Polaris’ unseen presence spiral out of her, protective—but it’s not needed. Their gaze feels almost approving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably where i'm going to leave it until AWE comes out, so i'll see you then! but i'm always around if you want to talk about these two or the game in general.


End file.
